


Avenoir

by kindclaws



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Carlos-centric, Culture Shock, Grossly Inaccurate Depictions of Law Systems, Is this reality??? Who knows, M/M, The Usual Night Vale Warnings, ie Casual Description of Horrifying Things
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2018-03-01 01:05:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2753837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kindclaws/pseuds/kindclaws
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They finally start asking about the trail of dead scientists left in the relentless pursuit of sense. When the summon comes, Cecil clings to him, telling him he 'can't' leave Night Vale, and Carlos thinks it means he doesn't want him to. By he realizes he mistook a dire warning for a lover's plea, it's already too late. And Night Vale has never been the most forgiving - or easy to find - of towns. As weeks pass, it begins to seem like a distant memory at best, a desperate hallucination at worst.</p><p>avenoir - n. "the desire that memory could flow backward."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pâro

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pâro - n. "the feeling that no matter what you do is always somehow wrong—that any attempt to make your way comfortably through the world will only end up crossing some invisible taboo—as if there’s some obvious way forward that everybody else can see but you, each of them leaning back in their chair and calling out helpfully, colder, colder, colder."

The envelope arrives on a Tuesday night that is extraordinary in the fact that it was a relatively ordinary day in Night Vale. In fact, Carlos is absently recounting his activity in the lab to Cecil as he sets the dinner table, because for all the time that's passed, he still forgets that the omniscient radio host already knows most of the results of that day's experiments – and even if he didn't, it's not like he'd be alarmed by any worrying results – and indeed, Cecil agrees with him that it's been quite an uneventful day.

Carlos accidentally drops the knife he'd been meaning to put at Cecil's place at the table and flinches – but the tinkling crash of metal on hardwood never comes. Instead, the knife embeds itself in a seemingly empty space at about the height of his knee, and quivers slightly. Cecil looks over and frowns as a low, pained moan is heard, and a previously-invisible potted cactus reveals itself as the impaled victim.

“I was wondering where that had disappeared off to,” he says mildly, and Carlos has to laugh. Such an activity would have rendered him a helpless, shaking mess in his first few weeks here, but now he merely retrieves the knife with a grunt and shoos the cactus away with a few harsh words. It flails three angry, spindly appendages at him and then embeds them in the hardwood and drags itself away, inch by inch, to hide behind the couch until it can return to being invisible.

Cecil calls it Petunia, despite the fact that it is clearly not any variety of _Petunioideae_  that Carlos recognizes.

Neither he nor Carlos ever bought Petunia when they were moving on. They have no idea where the half-sentient cactus came from, or why, but on selective weekdays it can occasionally be heard crooning soft jazz to itself, and so they continue to co-exist. The knife is dripping with a viscous, lime-green slime. Carlos holds it up to eye-level at an arm's distance, one eyebrow raised, before slipping it into a ziplock bag and throwing it into the freezer for later examination. He used to interrupt dinner for experiments, but he's learned by now that these kinds of things can wait. They may turn invisible in the time it takes him to get another knife from the cutlery-and-tiny-plastic-scorpions drawer and sit down again across from Cecil, but they will still be there.

Cecil's knee bumps against his, and in return Carlos extends one leg so their ankles touch as his lover cuts into the turkey with a thankfully slime-free knife. He begins to speak about the latest escapade of the floating kittens at the station, criticizing the one that floats near the ceiling and makes an effort to play with his hair every time he washes his hands with a fond exasperation. His voice is different off-air, more lazy and drawling, without the same effort to speak clearly. Carlos likes it. The kitten story is suddenly interrupted by a soft exclamation. Carlos looks up from his plate to find Cecil performing what looks like open-heart surgery on the turkey. It takes him a moment to realize that the white corner peeking out between layers of tissue is not a flap of cartilage, but in fact, the corner of a letter envelope. Cecil extracts it with some difficulty, the third eye tattooed on his forehead slowly opening and blinking as the other two squint at the scrawled address.

“It's for you!” Cecil says after a moment, leaning forward and plopping the greasy envelope on Carlos's plate the same way he might doll out a portion of imaginary corn.

“Uh, Cecil...?” Carlos says, still staring quizzically at the envelope. It looks about as well-kept as one would expect a piece of paper cooked in a turkey to look, covered in grease stains and still rather moist and steaming. “I guess I should take back my 'normal day' observation.”

“Nonsense,” Cecil says cheerfully. “It's just post. Didn't you see the flyers? They rained down on Old Town around 2 pm today. It's part of the Post Office's new effort to regain customers. Since most of us can't just walk into the office without those dreadful hallucinations, they now deliver letters and packages under the size of a three-year old child straight to your home. It's rather genius, if you ask me.”

“...In the turkey?” Carlos asks. “They couldn't just... I don't know, push them through the mail slot in the front door?”

“What's a mail slot?” Cecil responds. “Nevermind, one of your strange Outsider eccentricities. Yes, in the turkey. What else would you stuff it with? Honestly, sweet Carlos. Those flyers answered all the questions you might have. And any you might not yet realize you have. I'll pick one up for you tomorrow.”

But Carlos barely hears him, already gingerly tearing at the envelope, fearing for the state of its contents. He does not realize his pulse is thundering in his ears until the envelope peels open with a shiver and reveals... Nothing. It's as empty as the day it was born. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

“Are you all right, Carlos?”

He is silent for a moment, still turning the envelope over and over with his fork, as though enough flips will provide him with the letter that should, by all accounts, be inside.

“Fine,” he says faintly. “It's just that... It's from the university. The one that sponsored us. I thought it might be important.”

"Oh dear," Cecil says. Carlos looks up at him finally, but there is only mild concern in the faint creases of his forehead.

"I haven't suddenly grown an antenna, have I?" the scientist asks with an understandable amount of trepidation, given his current address.

"No, no," Cecil replies airily, waving his hand as though the suggestion is a physical wisp of smoke he can disperse with a gesture. "That was last week. I was referring to the letter. The Secret Police must have decided to censor it. Have you tried the turkey, my dear Carlos?"

"I'll have a piece now," Carlos says, setting the stained envelope aside and doing his best not to worry about it now. It's been a long week, and he wanted to enjoy this dinner without interruptions and distractions. The turkey looks like turkey, smells like turkey, and has the consistency of turkey. It doesn't taste anything like turkey, of course, but Cecil insists that turkeys in Night Vale always taste like pineapple coladas, so Carlos shrugs and digs in.

It's Cecil's turn to do the washing, but Carlos tries to help out anyway, until the radio host gives his wrist a teasing slap and demands to be allowed his daily allocation of domestic duty. Smiling contentedly, Carlos wraps his arms around Cecil's waist as the other man scrubs and rinses. Bending down slightly, he presses his cheek to the space between Cecil's shoulderblades, the same spot he sometimes lays his head on in the mornings when Cecil's head is still stubbornly buried in a mountain - sorry, _pile_  - of pillows and he requires a significant amount of coaxing and wandering hands to wake. Cecil hums in appreciation as Carlos raises his head enough to press a kiss to the back of Cecil's neck. Where his lips make contact with the radio host's skin, tiny tattooed spiders flourish to existence and scurry down his back.

"Carlos! That tickles!"

"I can show you something else that tickles," Carlos whispers into his ear with a grin. A year ago he'd have been mortified at the thought of such low-quality flirting, but there is none of that embarrassment now as he listens to the deep rumble of Cecil's laugh through the material of his tunic. His boyfriend turns now, pressed between his hips and the counter, and allows Carlos to mouth at the curve of his neck for a grand total of 53 seconds before pushing him away gently.

"Upstairs," Cecil scolds. "We have no more Temporary Immunity from Kitchenary Sexual Acts Ban forms, and you know very well what a third violation means!"

Carlos steps away with the grace of a kicked puppy, peeking at the slime-covered knife in the freezer on his way out of the kitchen. He takes the stairs two at a time because it makes the steps feel empowered, even remembering to stop and pet the fuzzy one just under the landing, because if it doesn't receive enough attention it likes to grow thorny vines and curl around their ankles.

It shocks him sometimes.

Not the spoiled fuzzy step. The way he's just started accepting some of Night Vale's tinier, domestic mysteries. The first few weeks after he and Cecil had moved in together, he'd gotten butterflies in his stomach every time he saw two toothbrushes in the upstairs bathroom. Such a simple and powerful reminder of co-existence. He reaches for his half of that reminder now, humming idly as he squirts out a healthy amount of beef-jerky flavoured toothpaste (with a surprisingly minty aftertaste) and begins his nighttime routine. As he spits into the sink, the toilet shudders.

Carlos pauses for just a moment, bent over the sink with half a mouthful of toothpaste left. A long moment passes, long enough for him to wonder if it was just the Faceless Old Woman lowering the seat again, but then while his eyes are fixed upon it, it shudders again. Carlos finishes up with brushing his teeth and tentatively creeps closer to the toilet. He's still not entirely sure how plumbing works in Night Vale, and as he lifts up the cover on the back of the toilet he fully expects to find a still-beating human heart, or at the very least a head of cabbage or something, but there is only an innocuous glass bottle floating in surprisingly ordinary looking water. Carlos fishes it out with curiosity, squinting through the wavy, imperfect glass at what looks like a roll of paper inside.

He unscrews the lid and manages to pull out a piece of paper that looks like it was folded by a fourth grader with limited understanding of parallel lines, muttering all the while about _Secret Police_  and _literal messages in bottles, really?_  The ornate letterhead quickly tells him it's the letter that was missing from the envelope in the turkey. The type is 12-point in a sensible serif font, with sentences occasionally crossed out in cyan crayon (which is allowed in Night Vale on alternate weekdays, on the basis that it is more an artistic utensil than a writing one.) Carlos' eyes skim the first few lines and his heart drops. Without tearing his gaze from the paper, he reaches out a shaking hand and pulls the toilet seat down so he can sit on it.

"Carlos?"

Cecil is watching him from the doorway, head tilted in curiosity. Carlos swallows the lump in his throat and gestures vaguely with the creased letter held tight in his hand.

"They're asking about my team," he says, and there is something wrong with his voice, something that makes it sound too flat.

Cecil seems to know, instinctively, what to do, moving forward and crouching in front of Carlos. Long, spindly fingers grasp his own brown ones tightly.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Cecil asks, voice soft and low.

Carlos can only stare at the letter, seeing un-crayoned phrases like _"unacceptable rate of undergraduate demise"_  and _"families of the deceased require answers"_  and _"cannot continue to fund your dangerous adventures"_ and  _"nonsensical supernatural reports when we asked for science."_

It's not until Cecil raises his knuckles to his lips and presses a gentle kiss to their rises and dips that Carlos can bring himself to shake his head. Cecil guides him to bed, pale lavender eyes fixed upon him the entire time as though Carlos might disappear if no one is there to look at him.

"Sometimes I forget," Carlos admits later, in the darkness. The sheets have been kicked away, tangled between their legs because Carlos is alternatively feverishly warm and plagued with the feeling of ice in his veins. Cecil is curled around him like an exoskeleton, fingers tangled in Carlos' thick curls and shoulders tense as though he is ready to leap up and defend at any given moment.

"We all forget things," Cecil reassures, his fingers tugging slightly at Carlos' scalp as they flex and readjust.

"I shouldn't. I grew up out there. Some of them were my classmates. We survived impossible scientific disasters together." _Until they didn't._

"It's not your fault," Cecil whispers fiercely, pulling Carlos even tighter to his chest, until it's hard to breathe and Carlos can't find it in him to tell him to stop, because even if it hurts at least he feels something.

"No, the university's right," Carlos says, voice dull, eyes fixed on a stationary ceiling. "Their families deserve answers. Better answers than my shitty monthly reports and a few cardboard boxes of blood-stained possessions delivered via astral projection because Fed-Ex can't get their shit together. I... I have to go. It'll be hard for them to believe but I have to explain what's been going on. There are legalities to deal with and my funding will probably be pulled regardless, but I'll come back anyway, find some other source of revenue-"

One thin, tapered finger taps his lips gently.

"Shh," Cecil says. The hand relaxes and the palm cups Carlos' cheek gently, fingers splayed against warm brown skin. "You don't have to answer. They'll forget about you."

"That's not right, Cecil. I know ignoring problems until they go away works a lot in Night Vale, but it doesn't out in the rea- out in the outside world. I have to leave."

There is a long silence in which Carlos can only hear Cecil's breathing, too quick for him to have fallen asleep, and faint scrapes from downstairs as Petunia the cactus drags itself to a new location, and Carlos' pulse hammers in his ears louder than the screeches that echo in his cranium if he thinks about attempting experiments on the Hooded Figures in the Dog Park that Definitely Does Not Exist. And then - a quiet plea, hardly loud enough for him to hear.

"You can't leave."

Carlos breathes out a heavy sigh, but does not respond. He turns his head and presses a kiss to the top of Cecil's head, and the arms around his torso momentarily squeeze. Slowly, he feels the radio host pressed against his side relax, and slip into slumber. Carlos waits to follow, but he does not.

He does not consider himself a particularly brave man, nor a selfless one, nor one possessing any survival talent to explain why he's survived this long when the others didn't. He is, however, determined, because he is a Scientist, and that is the fourth thing a Scientist is. He has faced fake clocks, multi-dimensional pterodactyls, buzzing shadow creatures, a miniature army with not-so-miniature bloodthirsty desires, and librarians with nothing more than a simple dedication to his duty. He lists names in his head, a list more familiar and personal than the ones Cecil's smooth, low voice tells him to memorize on the radio. Every one of his long-dead colleagues. Carlos thinks of his wise _abuelo_ who first introduced him to Science, of his mother and father who hardly understand their wayward son but love him fiercely all the same, of the sister that is simultaneously his best friend, and of living rooms crowded with relatives wearing holiday clothing and loudly clamoring for attention in Spanish. He wonders how it would feel if any of them died and a stranger refused to give them a reason, any reason that might start filling in the gap of an unnecessary loss. And he knows he has a duty.

So before dawn, when Cecil is still tucked between layers of dream and slumber, Carlos untangles himself from the protective arms, kisses him while he's still sleepy and unable to keep him there, and slips downstairs. He leaves a note via the magnets on the fridge door because it's the least he can do, though he can't guarantee its effectiveness considering the limited vocabulary on the magnets, and the fact that the Faceless Old Woman frequently rearranges them into haikus despite Poetry Week having passed months ago.

The car almost doesn't start, and Carlos wonders if this is another tick in a long tally of Night Vale itself appearing to possess sentience, right after the time the sidewalk decided to become adhesive beneath his feet for several minutes, delaying him long enough that he didn't walk straight into a conflict between Tamika Flynn's literate army and the Secret Police. But the engine coughs to life eventually, albeit reluctantly, and Carlos forces himself out of the driveway. Driving in Night Vale requires both sides of the brain and all five - sometimes six - senses, so it is hard for Carlos to think about anything other than deciphering the right of way in a town where half the drivers are both nocturnal and immune to stop signs until he reaches the town limits, over by Route 800.

Something nearly tangible shifts inside of him as he passes an invisible line that divides Night Vale from _not-Night Vale._  He doesn't look in the rearview mirror.

 

 

Perhaps he should have.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that the work title as well as the chapter titles are words taken from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows (which I highly recommend that you check out, because it's beautiful.) Some of the definitions have been shortened, others have been added to, but the original idea still belongs to the DoOS, all right?  
> I hope you enjoy reading. This is my first time writing in a few months, and the first time ever for Night Vale, so please tell me what you think. Any criticism is much appreciated. I may have gone overboard with the, uh, eccentricities. Apologies.


	2. Exulansis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Exulansis - n. "the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it... which allows it to drift away from the rest of your life story, until the memory itself feels out of place, almost mythical."

If Night Vale was unnerving the first time Carlos arrived, the Real World is downright horrifying. He finds a cheap apartment near campus, somehow passed over by students, and when the landlord passes him the lease, Carlos looks about for something sharp to prick his finger with for a full thirty seconds before he remembers.

"Here," the landlord mumbles around his moustache, pulling a ballpoint pen out of his pocket. Carlos' breath hitches at the sight of the banned utensil and he very nearly slaps it out of the poor man's hand lest the Secret Police apprehend them both - but then, there is no Secret Police here.  _Well, there might be_. Night Vale has taught Carlos to accept the fact that some of those internet conspiracy theories have more truth than he's comfortable with. But in any case, any Secret Police that may or may not exist outside of Night Vale are apparently much more competent at staying secret, and uphold laws that are generally more logical.

"The lease, sir," the landlord reminds him, and Carlos realizes he's been staring at the pen in horror for longer than is socially acceptable.

"Yes, yes, of course," he says hastily, and takes it from the man's fingers even though his mind is screaming at him to run, and signs at the bottom of the paper with the scrawl of an elementary schoolchild in September who hasn't picked up a pencil all summer and is trying to relearn cursive under the oppressive gaze of the teacher. Signing is the practical thing to do, after all, much more practical than pricking his finger and leaving a little bloodstain by the X instead of his name. And a scientist is always practical.

The first thing he does once he's carried the single cardboard box of possessions he's brought up to the apartment is reach for his cell phone.

Cecil is the first number on speed-dial, a remnant of the first few weeks in Night Vale when his team was finding things that _should_ be killing people - earthquakes, radioactivity, a distinct lack of oxygen wherever the Glow Cloud cast a multicoloured shadow, you know, the usual - and considered it their civic duty to inform the local radio host that in their professional opinion, everyone in Night Vale should have been evacuated, like, _decades_ ago.

The apartment is sparsely decorated, with a dusty couch in the living room that the landlord insists he can pull out and sleep on until he gets himself settled.

Carlos doesn't intend to get himself settled.

He sits on the couch, cell phone in hand, and calls Cecil. It rings, seemingly too loud in the silence of the apartment. Carlos watches the dust lit up by narrow shafts of yellow sunlight swirl, and waits for Cecil to pick up. The phone rings, and rings, and rings. Finally there is a crackle, and then a beep, and then a voice.

"We're sorry, the number you are trying to reach does not exist."

Carlos stares at his phone in disbelief, and calls again. He knows phone plans in Night Vale can be temperamental, and sometimes fluorescent ghost monkeys infest the cell phone tower for days at a time, carrying hand-made signs demanding equal rights and also free Big Rico's slices, but never, _never_ has he called Cecil and been told the number does not exist. There are lots of things that don't exist. Certain houses that are between two houses that do exist, and therefore it would make sense for all of them to exist, but don't. Mountains, depending on who you ask. Hooded figures, if the Secret Police is within earshot.

But Cecil has always been a dependable constant in an otherwise unreliable experiment.

So then Carlos admits that yes, okay, maybe there is something wrong with his phone, or Cecil's. No matter. Cecil will call him soon, right? Maybe outcoming calls are easier in Night Vale. Carlos had some trouble contacting his relatives during the holidays, but he always attributed that to the Secret Police who would tap in on the line and dominate the conversation, and less to signal issues.

"Three time's the charm," he announces loudly to the apartment. "It'll work this time."

The apartment doesn't answer. Honestly, it feels a little too quiet without the Faceless Old Woman's soft voice replying with something completely unrelated.

With a sigh, Carlos dials again, and just as he raises his phone to his ear, it bites him. He gives an undignified shriek and drops it on the floor, wrenching his feet up and onto the couch. His cell phone, sporting fangs that most certainly were not there before, and also eight limbs that look like they were transplanted from a tarantula, gnashes its teeth at him before scuttling under the cool darkness of the couch. If he listens, he can hear it growing quietly.

Carlos waits a few moments to build up his courage, and then leaps off the couch, making a run for the kitchen. He perches on the counter and throws a glance over his shoulder back at the couch, but his phone hasn't followed. He slips off the counter and begins opening cabinets and drawers, searching for something to trap his phone with. _This is fascinating!_ All the previous specimens of technology fused with sentient material he and his team of scientists captured died after a short time in captivity, so he knows he'll have to move quickly to study this. In fact, he can even present it to the University of What It Is as an example of Dangerous Things From Night Vale.

Unfortunately, before he can find a jar, or even a stray tupperware container left over from the apartment's previous inhabitants, there is a thundering knock on the door.

Carlos looks over curiously.

He walks to the door cautiously, keeping one eye on the couch in case his cell phone decides it wants another taste of him - or worse, a taste of the neighbours down the hall. There are two people standing outside in the hall, a man he didn't speak much to during his stay at the University, but recognizes as a professor, and a short, younger woman with a severe haircut. They both do not look happy to see him.

"Dr. Carlos Marron?" the woman says. It takes him a moment to recognize his last name tacked on after his first, and it should be worrying, how his initial confusion at the townspeoples' insistence that his last name really was 'The Scientist' turned into a bemused acceptance, but it's not.

"Yeah," Carlos responds, unfortunately one of those people who is just not very eloquent when keeping an eye on a rabid phone-tarantula.

"You'd better come with us," she continues.

Carlos winces.

"I'm sorry, this isn't a great time," he says. "I just arrived, I need to unpack - and science. I need to science. There is a very important scientific discovery waiting to be made in this very apartment and I'd like to capture it before it gets away. Also, it has all my photos."

His visitors blink in almost perfect unison.

"Dr. Marron," his old colleague says, finally speaking up. "I'm afraid you really must come with us. The University is waiting. We'd like not to get the police involved, but we will if we have to."

"Oh," Carlos says in a very small voice. "Oh _dios_."

  
........................................................................................................................................................................

  
They put him in a very small boardroom.

Looking around and continuously rolling and unrolling the sleeves on his lab coat, Carlos can only be grateful that despite the clear indicators of imprisonment - the locked door, the watchful gazes down the hall, the camera in the corner of the ceiling - it is not a jail cell. He begins to wonder if he can really be charged with anything, like perhaps occupational negligence? Outliving his colleagues for no discernible reason other than the strange liking the town had taken to him?

When a solid hour passes and the door stays shut, Carlos starts to think that perhaps he should have listened to Cecil and stayed home. Judging by his drowsiness, and the pale yellow light that is filtering in through the frosted windows on one wall, it is still mid-afternoon. Cecil would be stirring about now, mumbling into his chest about siesta-time being over, and Carlos would be dragging a lazy hand through his boyfriend's soft hair and -

He has visitors, it seems.

Carlos stands, but the three people who file into the room and discretely lock the door behind them make no move to shake his hand or anything, so he swings his arms awkwardly at his sides, and when all three have sat down on the other side of the table, he sits as well.

"I don't believe I introduced myself earlier. I'm known on campus mostly as Professor Kayali, but you can call me Sylvia. How are you, Carlos?"

He blinks owlishly at the woman who begins conversation. She is the one from earlier, from when he was escorted from his apartment to a small car whose leather insides boasted an impressive amount of cheeto dust to the campus to this small room right here. Despite her sharp features and the severe haircut that gives her even more of an angular appearance, all hard edges and reflective surfaces, her voice is quiet and surprisingly kind.

"Confused," Carlos says eventually. "Worried. Fearful that you won't believe me and will want to come to Night Vale yourself, and that I won't be able to protect you."

"Ah," the short man at her side says, scribbling earnestly on a clipboard. Carlos is reminded, absurdly, of himself in his first few weeks in Night Vale, and squirms.

"I'll admit, we have no idea how to proceed with this situation," Sylvia says, pausing to cough lightly into her fist. "The science department has been in mourning for months. Dr. Mapalldi's family is threatening to sue the university, despite the numerous contracts she signed, Dr. Atkin's family is wondering why they still haven't gotten back Dave's body or why the police haven't been involved. These are... extraordinary circumstances."

"That's what we thought as well," Carlos says sadly.

"Could you elaborate on that?" the second man says. Carlos hesitates. Can he elaborate on that? He runs a brief mental inventory of everything involved in the act of speaking. He can still feel his lips, cracked and a little bloody at the corner because he's been unconsciously biting his lower one all day. His tongue takes about as much space in his mouth as it usually does, and he hasn't had throat spiders in a while. His lungs seem to be in working condition, given that he is breathing.

"Yes," Carlos says.

A moment passes.

"Well, will you?" the man with the clipboard prods.

Well, that is a more difficult question to answer. Carlos communicates in graphs and hypotheses and data samples. He is not so good at stringing together explanations involving only words and stories. Cecil has always been better at that. What sentences can he possibly form, within the narrow constraints of spoken language, to tell grieving families why their sons and daughters, brothers and sisters will not ever return to them, not even in coffins, because StrexCorp was as efficient at disposing of the remnants of his team as they were at everything else?

What justification can he possibly give for the ways they died or otherwise ceased to exist in this plane of perceived reality?

"Carlos?" Sylvia asks tentatively. He raises his eyes to meet hers, steady and brown and long-lashed, the only soft thing about her. "Would it be easier to start from the beginning?"

 _The beginning_ , Carlos thinks. _The place to start any story._

"Yes," he says, and his voice is so quiet that he makes himself repeat it a second time. "And another thing. I need my phone. Take a pair of gloves and a cage, and look under the couch in my apartment. It should still be there, I think, if it hasn't wandered off. It'll help you believe me."

The second man looks incredibly skeptical, but he exits the room for a moment to send a graduate student to Carlos' address, and then returns. The three of them look expectantly at Carlos.

And so he gathers the frayed ends of his thoughts, and pictures Cecil at his desk, sitting in front of a microphone not connected to any soundboard or power source, eyes half-lidded and weight on his elbows as he croons a greeting.

"A friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep," Carlos says, speaking slowly, clearly, imitating the mouth he knows so intimately. The three University representatives in front of him look puzzled, and so he closes his eyes to better separate himself from the situation, to speak as objectively as a true journalist. "Welcome to Night Vale."

They are, for the most part, a good audience.

At least, Carlos tells himself that. They argue the first of the most scientifically impossible happenings, the way Carlos once did, but he wearily describes the experiments, the botched procedures that would occasionally take off a limb and send it into a different dimension, the undeniable conclusions. And as he continues to speak, they grow quieter and quieter. It is not until the second man, the one that does not speak much, stands up and storms out of the tiny boardroom, throwing his hands up in the air and shouting that he can't listen to his bullshit anymore, that Carlos realizes their silence is not coming from acceptance but from disbelief.

The man with the clipboard sighs and flips through six pages of notes, before leaning closer to Sylvia and whispering as though Carlos can't hear him at this distance.

"I'll tell them to drop the charges. We'll say the valves to the Bunsen burners weren't shut off and the leak made them all go peacefully."

Sylvia does not answer, nor does she look up from the table as the man with the clipboard stands and follows his outraged colleague out.

"Carlos," she says eventually. "You know that we do not really want to blame you for... Everything that has happened, right? We're not really going to let Atkins' family press charges. It was understandably, a very traumatic experience. You don't need to make up stories to try to explain it."

"I'm not making anything up!" Carlos protests, immediately straightening his shoulders and preparing to launch into a solid defense of his recount. But just then, there is a knock on the door, and it is the graduate student with a disgruntled expression and a cage full of feral cellular phone.

Sylvia watched attentively as Carlos pulls aside plastic bags and masking tape to get to the cage inside, only to find...

His phone.

Devoid of fangs or tarantula-like appendages. Still, he reaches for it cautiously, aware that it might spontaneously grow them and bite his fingers at any moment. But it lets him skim his fingers along the glossy black screen, and then pick it up, and by the time Carlos is withdrawing his hand and resting the phone on the table's surface, there is a niggling little voice in the back of his mind that he is determined to ignore.

He turns on the phone under Sylvia's watchful gaze, meaning to go to the many photos he's saved on it in the last months, photos of scientifically interesting landmarks and experiments and _Cecil_ , but he'll just skip over those in front of Sylvia (even though, scientifically speaking, Cecil is very interesting in his own right).

Carlos taps his finger against the photos icon and for a very brief moment, sees many tiny thumbnails arrayed in neat rows and columns, featuring blue skies and pale sands and Cecil's smile, just before the screen flickers and goes dark. He mashes buttons frantically, far too aware of his audience, as the phone takes its sweet time restarting.

Part of him knows, before he taps the photos icon again, that they will be gone.

And he is right. It diligently displays all the selfies his sister Maria took with him the week before he left on his scientific sabbatical, and after that, photos of a cool rock he found on campus, and after that, a single photo of the entire original team at the airport, still with their bodies and souls intact. Carlos stares at that photo for a long time, until Sylvia reaches out and rests her hand against his wrist.

"Carlos," she says again. "I suggest you go home and rest. We can speak again tomorrow, for lunch perhaps? And..."

He forces himself to drag his gaze upwards, to meet her cautious eyes, but inside he is still reeling. He'd left folders upon folders of lab reports back in Night Vale, thinking to travel light, but he must have overlooked something - some kind of paperwork he should have filled out for the Secret Police to allow him to take his photos out of the city limits, or something - and without cold, hard, evidence, he finds himself with nothing solid upon which to stand on.

Carlos is a practical man. He is a scientist, and scientists must be practical. So are his colleagues. They do not believe in urban myths and supernatural tales spoken under blankets and over flashlights at slumber parties.

"My daughter sometimes had trouble distinguishing her nightmares from reality, when she came back from overseas," Sylvia is continuing, her voice even and measured, calculated to be the most soothing of tones. "The local veteran's association connected us with a very good therapist, she's doing much better now..."

"I'm not crazy," Carlos says. "I have scientifically witnessed and recorded everything I have recounted today. I don't need a therapist."

Sylvia sighs, pulling away. Carlos ignores her until she pushes a thin white rectangle into his stiff fingers.

"Just think about it. It might help to speak to someone who's not as scientific about emotions as us," she says, giving a wry smile that Carlos can't return.

"Thank you," he says. "But no thank you."

Sylvia drives him home, despite his protests that he can still walk or use the bus, and he doesn't miss the way that she slips the business card into his lab coat pocket at the door, but he is exhausted, too exhausted by the day's ordeals to argue.

He goes upstairs to his empty and dusty and unlived-in apartment, and sits on the couch, and dials Cecil's number, over and over again. It's not in his speeddial anymore, not even listed in his contacts, but he has it memorized like a prayer he repeats to himself over and over as he calls, and every time he is told the number does not exist.

When it gets dark outside, past the time Cecil would normally come home from the station with a smile and a new tale of Khoshekh's kittens, ready to sweep him into an embrace and pepper his face with flowery kisses, Carlos wanders into the bathroom, still clutching his phone like a cut lifeline. He can feel his guilt and confusion and loneliness like dirt on his skin, and turns on the shower, hoping to wash away all those negative feelings. Showers in Night Vale sometimes do that, if you ask nicely and have nice-smelling shampoo. When he came back from the Desert Otherworld, he took the longest showers he had ever taken in his life, so fascinated by the prospect of so much water available for him, never to leave him dry and thirsty and lost again.

But the apartment is so quiet, so empty, and when the water has warmed Carlos finds that he does not really have the energy to undress, so he climbs into the bathtub and sits down under the hot spray, one hand holding his phone slung over the edge of the bathtub, and cries.

He is a full grown man crying in a bathtub in a lab coat with the water running down his face like raindrops down a window, and he is so, so alone, and so, so far from home. Even in the Desert Otherworld, when nothing else remained, he still had Cecil's voice to whisper into his ear  _Good Night, Carlos..._

 

 

_...Good Night._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will be completed! I promise! I am just very, very slow.


End file.
